Gorgeous Mother's Day

I had a gorgeous Mother's Day.


Mother's and Father's Days around here normally concentrate on sleep-ins and breakfast in bed made by the kids.


This last year both girls have done a lot more cooking and it really showed how much their skills have improved in the meal they produced yesterday. Makes me wish I'd kept a record of what they made each year. I do remember a few tea and toast years, some french toast, and quite a bit of Dad help but can't remember much more.


Anyway this year there was a cup of tea followed by a delicious banana and oat smoothie in bed. 
After leisurely getting up and ready there was a brunch of pumpkin, fakin (vegetarian bacon) and caramelised onion mini quiches and salmon, dill and cream cheese finger sandwiches,    

lemon and cardamon bun and chocolate pastry swirl with a latte to go!

Finally an early afternoon sweet course of lemon and cardamon buns and chocolate pastry swirls with coffee. 


Fabulous! 

And done with no help - (and all went smoothly except the spilling of milk all over the laptop with the recipe on it which was sitting on kitchen bench!! We need to rethink this habit!! Insurance claim in, fingers crossed!)






I suspect you may see their recipes if you follow Mia's Blog. 

In the afternoon friends lent us their season passes to the netball and we saw our first professional level netball match - NSW Swifts vs Melbourne Vixens. What a game! Swifts won - just - and it was very exciting with a great atmosphere. Always good to try something new. Ian even one a lucky door prize at the after match members event. 







Thank you Gorgeous Girls and Lovely Husband. It was a great day!
Nicola / Mum

Brunch for a cool Autumn Morning

Do you know the "Australian Crawl" song "Beautiful People"? It's a classic piece of Australian 80s Rock from my formative years. It has 2 lines that come back to me from time to time - "Beautiful People - their garden's full of furniture, their house is full of plants" which I just like and "They've got friends who just flew in from L.A." And I sometimes do have those friends - 2 of my very favourite people came for breakfast on Saturday morning - fairly fresh off the plane from LA - Merran, a friend from high school and her nearly one year old baby, Oliver. We feel a special bond with him because we were staying with them when he came home from hospital and for those first few days which was very special.


They came early (due to jet-lag body-clocks and a busy schedule of people to show Oliver to on his first trip to Australia) so I guess it was actually breakfast.


We started with freshly squeezed orange and pineapple juice (well really we started with a round of enthusiastic hugs - but you want to know about the food I expect)




Then we had a fruit and yoghurt breakfast entree.

Honeydew melon, kiwi fruit and fresh figs with greek yoghurt drizzled in honey, whilst playing with Oliver on the rug. 










Next was breakfast main - Eggs Florentine with fried roma tomatoes. I haven't made Hollandaise Sauce since catering college - but will definitely do it again. Found a very detailed recipe on taste.com.au which worked really well. Had one dash to the sink for cold water as the eggs appeared to begin scrambling - but rescued it! So there were:
* toasted wholemeal english muffins, 
* 2 bunches of English Spinach washed and very quickly wilted in melted butter while still a little wet - (I love the colour of the spinach) and then put in a seive for a few minutes to drain)
* poached eggs from our chickens
* lashings of Hollandaise Sauce on top! I used the recipe above, except that I used a white wine vinegar reduction instead of water as the base.


There was also some Roma tomatoes, diced and slowly cooked with salt, pepper and olive oil for the side. 


We took a break to introduce Oliver to chickens and a trampoline - both of which were a hit and then he fell gorgeously asleep on the rug.


Finally Mia made fabulous Ginger Scones for Breakfast dessert with a pot of T2 French Earl Grey Tea. Delicious! I think you'll be able to get the recipe for them on her blog some day soon.

A great way to start the weekend!!


Nicola